The present invention relates to a method and system for providing additional information service onto e-mail in response to receiving a user-initiated selection, more particularly to a method and system for providing additional information service onto e-mail where the information pattern of a predetermined string of the content of a received e-mail is automatically recognized, and the additional information related with the string can be provided to the user along with the content (basic information) of the e-mail by a simple operation, so the user can conveniently use the e-mail service.
Email system facilitates the exchange of electronic mails over a network, such as a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network), or public network (e.g., Internet). FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary screen display of a web page for providing a conventional e-mail service. The conventional e-mail service only provides content of an e-mail that is written by a sender. However, a recipient sometimes wants to obtain additional information related to some text or graphical items included in the content. For example, when the text of the e-mail includes a person's name or company name, if the user wants to check the related information (e.g., the person's address, phone number, e-mail address, etc.), he would have to find the information by executing a separate address list program, operating a PDA, or using other ways.
Especially, if a person receives a meeting or business-related e-mail wherein names or phone numbers are included, it might take significant time for him to search related information about each name or each phone number, that is additional contact information for the each person or the each phone number.
Generally, a portal website having an e-mail service provides an online service for searching an address list. However, where the user searches the related information using an external service or separately implementing program, it is still inconvenient because the user should temporarily leave the web page showing the email and move to the service page or a search screen, and search the name or the phone number one by one, and while frequently changing the screen, requesting a separate service, and executing a separate program, the efficiency of computer resources or network resources manage is lowered, which is problematic.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method and system for providing additional information related to content of an e-mail without leaving the web page showing the email.
Specific advantages and features of the invention will be apparent from the attached drawings and description of an illustrative embodiment of the invention.